JONATHAN BROCKLEBANK: So playing Doctor Who is tough, Mr Gatwa? Try being a nurse in a busy hospital - then you'll know the real meaning of exhaustion

Daily Mail​

2 days ago

Forty years ago a teenage actor called Adam Woodyatt appeared in the launch episode of a new soap opera which the BBC hoped would rival ITV 's Coronation Street in the ratings war.
The 16-year-old figured he would give it until the end of the year in the role of Ian Beale and decide then on any longer-term commitment.
Sensible boy. EastEnders could have tanked. Acting may not have proved his forte.
I felt a lot like young Adam did when I took my first job in journalism in 1990. Let's see where this malarky takes us. Plenty of time to reinvent myself if it doesn't work out.
It so happens Woodyatt, aged 57, is still playing Ian Beale in EastEnders, which makes him the longest serving male cast member of the show.
I am the same age – and, after 35 years, still doing journalism, and still trying to figure out whether it is working out or not.
No doubt there have been ups and downs in the actor's four decades in the fictional East London community of Walford – times when he has felt close to quitting, when the job seems to grow prison walls which must be breached.
I've often daydreamed about tunnelling out of my job too. Who doesn't dwell on the road not taken after more than half a lifetime on the same, familiar one?
I mention Woodyatt because he is in showbusiness and yet, somehow, too, practically a regular member of the UK workforce. More than any other actor I can think of, he seems to understand the meaning of graft.
He has those qualities most of us earning a crust require to keep those wheels of self- sufficiency turning – staying power; stamina; resilience.
Now let's meet someone who may be his polar opposite. Poor Ncuti Gatwa gave an account the other day of why he quit Doctor Who after two series playing the Time Lord.
It's because he's 'too old' and his body was getting tired. The man is 32.
Playing the Doctor left him drained 'physically, emotionally and mentally'.
Wow. Perhaps not for him then a role playing a real doctor on a cancer ward, say, as opposed to a pretend one zipping around the universe in a police box.
Here is some more on the challenges involved in portraying a character who, almost uniquely in television drama, doesn't even have a fixed character to portray: 'The actors playing the Doctor are only actors playing the Doctor. Unfortunately, we are mere mortals.'
And this priceless beauty: 'I would love to have the energy and youth to be able to do this full time for the rest of my life, but my knees are telling me it's time.'
His knees?
Professional tennis players say this kind of thing in their careers' twilight and we kind of get it. They're normally in their late 30s, decades of punishment to their joints on the clock. Yes, Djokovic, Nadal et al did all their own stunts.
And is the suggestion that superhuman powers would be required to drag himself into work on a third series when the role is as demanding as that of the Doctor? We're talking eight episodes.
I cannot pretend I have been particularly interested in who has been at the controls of the Tardis since Tom Baker took his leave of the show after seven years in 1981.
I remember he was in his late 40s at the time. I don't remember any chat about his knees.
I am aware that long after my regular viewing days were behind me Peter Capaldi managed to struggle through three series between 2014 and 2017 before, pushing 60, he decided this was a young man's game.
How on earth did the man cope? Pure grit, I imagine.
And then, in 2023, the 15th incarnation of the Doctor – Rwandan born and Scottish-educated Ncuti Gatwa who cites every kind of exhaustion as his reason for exiting stage left.
Adam Woodyatt has been in EastEnders for eight years longer than Gatwa has been alive. You have to wonder how knackered he must be – how physically, emotionally and mentally draining it is to be Ian Beale every time you go to work.
How are his knees? His character has spent plenty of time down on them.
The actor may well have allowed himself a rueful chuckle on learning just how exhausting it was to be on BBC's flagship sci-fi drama, where they shoot a handful of episodes a year, as opposed to its flagship soap, where they shoot many dozens.
But of course most of those reading of the 32-year-old's trials at the coal face of television entertainment will not be in steady employment in the showbiz industry.
They will be veterans of real workplace fatigue and stress and burn-out.
Playing a fictional Time Lord is a tough gig? Try playing a real-life teacher in an inner city school or an NHS nurse frantically attending to patients on trolleys in hospital corridors because all the beds are full.
Try being shouted at all day in a call centre or running a convenience store where teen thieves daily help themselves to your stock.
And now imagine you're still doing the same gig 25 or 30 years later. I think that is rather more what exhaustion looks like than shooting a grand total of 16 episodes of Doctor Who over two years.
How in the real world do we shoulder the burden of our roles as society's worker ants? Well, for most of us, by telling ourselves it's not a choice but a responsibility. By looking at the alternative and shuddering.
I've been shuddering at the alternative to my role since I was 22 – Adam Woodyatt for even longer than that – and sure, there are days when 32 or 42 or 52 might appear an appropriate age to have stopped.
Then there are those other days when pride in the ability to keep on keeping on is an energy in itself.
My contemporaries in this industry – and many others, I suspect – are operating largely on post-exhaustion reserves. We've lost count of the brick walls we've hit, of the days from hell and the sleepless nights that long innings in the workplace inevitably bring.
Some of us are so spent we can barely think back to the time when the tank ran empty, yet mysterious afterburners propel us forward and we remain grateful as long as they do.
Being a Time Lord is a whole different kettle of fish. Being the Doctor for a season or two is but a fleeting indulgence for any actor lucky enough to land the role.
Indeed, the whole conceit of Doctor Who – that its main character can regenerate endlessly into fresh human forms – is perhaps a useful metaphor for a modern, flaky generation that doesn't stick at anything for very long.
Doctors come and Doctors go and that's showbiz. But let's at least be honest about it, Ncuti. You left the programme not because you're old but because you're young and the world is at your feet.
Others, with fewer options than you, know the real meaning of exhaustion.